From ai815@freenet.carleton.ca Fri Apr 12 10:01:38 1996 Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 05:36:31 -0400 From: Greg Erwin To: jimdew@macc.wisc.edu, aa357@freenet.buffalo.edu, freethnker@aol.com Subject: March 1996 Nullifidian ############################################################ ############################################################ ______ / / / / / /__ __ / / ) (__ / / (__(__ __ |\ ( ) ) / / | \ | / / . _/_ . __ / . __ __ | \ | / / / / ) / ) / / ) __ ) / ) ) \| (__(__(___(__(__(___(__(__(__(__(__(__/ (__ =========================================================== *The*E-Zine*of*Atheistic*Secular*Humanism*and*Freethought** =========================================================== back issues now available at: http://infoweb.magi.com/~godfree/magazine.html ############################################################ ##### Volume III, Number 3 ##### ################### ISSN 1201-0111 ####################### ####################### MAR 1996 ########################### nullifidian, n. & a. (Person) having no religious faith or belief. [f. med. L _nullifidius_ f. L _nullus_ none + _fides_ faith; see -IAN] Concise Oxford Dictionary The purpose of this magazine is to provide a source of articles dealing with many aspects of humanism. We are ATHEISTIC as we do not believe in the actual existence of any supernatural beings or any transcendental reality. We are SECULAR because the evidence of history and the daily horrors in the news show the pernicious and destructive consequences of allowing religions to be involved with politics or government. We are HUMANISTS and we focus on what is good for humanity, in the real world. We will not be put off with offers of pie in the sky, bye and bye. ============================================================ TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. WHAT INFIDELS HAVE DONE. Robert Ingersoll 2. Public Education by Brent Yaciw, AthAlFLB@aol.com 3. Rabid raving Atheism, by Greg Erwin 4. HAMILTON-WENTWORTH ROMAN CATHOLIC SEPARATE SCHOOL BOARD application for employment ========================== //*BEGINNING OF ARTICLE*// ========================== Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship. WHAT INFIDELS HAVE DONE. 1 This file, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold. from Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL **** **** WHAT INFIDELS HAVE DONE. ONE HUNDRED years after Christ had died suppose some one had asked a Christian, What hospitals have you built? What asylums have you founded? They would have said "None." Suppose three hundred years after the death of Christ the same questions had been asked the Christian, he would have said "None, not one." Two hundred years more and the answer would have been the same. And at that time the Christian could have told the questioner that the Mohammedans had built asylums before the Christians. He could also have told him that there had been orphan asylums in China for hundreds and hundreds of years, hospitals in India, and hospitals for the sick at Athens. Here it may be well enough to say that all hospitals and asylums are not built for charity. They are built because people do not want to be annoyed by the sick and the insane. If a sick man should come down the street and sit upon your doorstep, what would you do with him? You would have to take him into your house or leave him to suffer. Private families do not wish to take the burden of the sick. Consequently, in self-defence, hospitals are built so that any wanderer coming to a house, dying, or suffering from any disease, may immediately be packed off to a hospital and not become a burden upon private charity. The fact that many diseases are contagious rendered hospitals necessary for the preservation of the lives of the citizens. The same thing is true of the asylums. People do not, as a rule, want to take into their families, all the children who happen to have no fathers and mothers. So they endow and build an asylum where those children can be sent -- and where they can be whipped according to law, Nobody wants an insane stranger in his house. The consequence is, that the community, to get rid of these people, to get rid of the trouble, build public institutions and send them there. Now, then, to come to the point, to answer the interrogatory often flung at us from the pulpit, What institutions have Infidels built? In the first place, there have not been many Infidels for many years and, as a rule, a known Infidel cannot get very rich, for the reason, that the Christians are so forgiving and loving they boycott him. If the average Infidel, freely stating his opinion, could get through the world himself, for the last several hundred years, he has been in good luck. But as a matter of fact there have been some Infidels who have done some good, even from a Christian standpoint. The greatest charity ever established in the United States by a man -- not by a community to get rid of a nuisance, but by a man who wished to do good and wished that good to last after his death -- is the Girard College in the city of Philadelphia. Girard was an Infidel. He gained his first publicity by going like a common person into the hospitals and taking care of those suffering from contagious diseases -- from cholera and smallpox. So there is a man by the name of James Lick, an Infidel, who has given the finest observatory ever given to the world. And it is a good thing for an Infidel to increase the sight of men. The reason people are theologians is because they cannot see. Mr. Lick has increased human vision, and I can say right here that nothing has been seen through the telescope calculated to prove the astronomy of Joshua. Neither can you see with that telescope a star that bears a Christian name. The reason is that Christianity was opposed to astronomy. so astronomers took their revenge, and now there is not one star that glitters in all the vast firmament of the boundless heavens that has a Christian name. Mr. Carnegie has been what they call a public-spirited man. He has given millions of dollars for libraries and other institutions, and he certainly is not an orthodox Christian. Infidels, however, have done much better even than that. They have increased the sum of human knowledge. John W. Draper, in his work on "The Intellectual Development of Europe," has done more good to the American people and to the civilized world than all the priests in it. He was an Infidel. Buckle is another who has added to the sum of human knowledge. Thomas Paine, an Infidel, did more for this country than any other man who ever lived in it. Most of the colleges in this country have, I admit, been founded by Christians, and the money for their support has been donated by Christians, but most of the colleges of this country have simply classified ignorance, and I think the United States would be more learned than it is to-day if there never had been a Christian college in it. But whether Christians gave or Infidels gave has nothing to do with the probability of the Jonah story or with the probability that the mark on the dial went back ten degrees to prove that a little Jewish king was not going to die of a boil. And if the Infidels are all stingy and the Christians are all generous it does not even tend to prove that three men were in a fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than was its wont without even scorching their clothes. The best college in this country -- or, at least, for a long time the best -- was the institution founded by Ezra Cornell. That is a school where people try to teach what they know instead of what they guess. Yet Cornell University was attacked by every orthodox college in the United States at the time it was founded, because they said it was without religion. Everybody knows that Christianity does not tend to generosity. Christianity says: "Save your own soul, whether anybody else saves his or not." Christianity says: "Let the great ship go down. You get into the little life-boat of the gospel and paddle ashore, no matter what becomes of the rest." Christianity says you must love God, or something in the sky, better than you love your wife and children. And the Christian, even when giving, expects to get a very large compound interest in another world. The Infidel who gives, asks no return except the joy that comes from relieving the wants of another. Again the Christians, although they have built colleges, have built them for the purpose of spreading their superstitions, and have poisoned the minds of the world, while the Infidel teachers have filled the world with light. Darwin did more for mankind than if he had built a thousand hospitals. Voltaire did more than if he had built a thousand asylums for the insane. He will prevent thousands from going insane that otherwise might be driven into insanity by the "glad tidings of great joy." Haeckel is filling the world with light. I am perfectly willing that the results of the labors of Christians and the labors of Infidels should be compared. Then let it be understood that Infidels have been in this world but a very short time. A few years ago there were hardly any. I can remember when I was the only Infidel in the town where I lived. Give us time and we will build colleges in which something will be taught that is of use. We hope to build temples that will be dedicated to reason and common sense, and where every effort will be made to reform mankind and make them better and better in this world. I am saying nothing against the charity of Christians; nothing against any kindness or goodness. But I say the Christians, in my judgment, have done more harm than they have done good. They may talk of the asylums they have built, but they have not built asylums enough to hold the people who have been driven insane by their teachings. Orthodox religion has opposed liberty. It has opposed investigation and free-thought. If all the churches in Europe had been observatories, if the cathedrals had been universities where facts were taught and where nature was studied, if all the priests had been real teachers, this world would have been far, far beyond what it is to-day. There is an idea that Christianity is positive, and Infidelity is negative. If this be so, then falsehood is positive and truth is negative. What I contend is that Infidelity is a positive religion; that Christianity is a negative religion. Christianity denies and Infidelity admits. Infidelity stands by facts; it demonstrates by the conclusions of the reason. Infidelity does all it can to develop the brain and the heart of man. That is positive. Religion asks man to give up this world for one he knows nothing about, That is negative. I stand by the religion of reason. I stand by the dogmas of demonstration. ==================== //*END OF ARTICLE*// ==================== "We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me." [Jack Handey] ========================== //*BEGINNING OF ARTICLE*// ========================== Public Education [Ed. Note: originally appeared on ffrf-l, the Freedom From Religion Foundation's email discussion list. The character named "Skeptic" had been posting the usual derogatory messages about the worthlessness of public education. This was Brent Yaciw's excellent reply, which is worth sharing. Permission sought and obtained.] I'm not going to bother repeating all of Skeptic's post; enough of you have already seen it to know the general direction. Let me simply point out a few of what I consider highly non-humanist attitudes in it: "some kids are unteachable" Presumably because god made them that way, right? Funny how people with this attitude give up SO EASILY on children, but expect these same "unteachable" kids to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" as adults. Illogical, yes, but that never bothers true believers. "in public schools you can be suspended for calling a black man a nigger" Or a cocksucker, or pissant, or any number of other personal insults. If you can't tell the difference between that and expressing yourself on a political issue on your car in the parking lot, there's not much point in discussing it. Take a course in basic critical thinking. "YA right keep dreaming." Typical response of the know-not. "Yes and your political "opinions" are so much more logical...A prevailing political viewpoint is right because a majority of people have been convinced that it is right." He confuses opinion and belief with reality and logic. Given the same facts, the logical conclusion is inevitably the same. The anti-public school crowd simply ignores the facts. "Thats probably true, but I never said anything about wanting to shift money into theirs[the RRR's] or any other institutes coffers." If you fire a shotgun at me and miss and kill your mother, does your "intent" matter? That's MY point: you're killing the RRR's enemies for them, and then asking us to applaud you for it. "Why is it everyone hates it when some one gets a tax exemption?" I don't hate it when someone gets a tax exemption; I hate it when an organization that works to the detriment of us all, that inevitably wants to destroy my viewpoint by force, gets a tax exemption. The element of force is the difference, and that's why we keep losing battles: we're not willing (nor should we be) to force others to become atheists. "Private schools or religious schools, I think there is a difference in this case." Yes, there is, but realistically around 90% of private schools ARE religious schools. I would have no problem with ONLY purely secular schools being eligible for vouchers, but then, without government supervision, who would see that they stayed that way? Hell, it's hard enough monitoring the public schools! "death education for youngsters" You mean you can guarantee that no one's parents, brothers or sisters, or other relatives or friends will die before they reach fourth grade? The sooner children are taught that death is as natural as life, the sooner they lose their unreasoning fear of it--which is the heart of religion. Same with learning about other realities of life like child abuse--or need we wait until AFTER the priests have at them? "I can play the quote game too." I don't play "quote games." I have a macro that includes quotes with my signature, generally at random. Of course, I do choose the initial input, but they are for amusement purposes primarlily. "I don't want my kids to see that stuff in the sixth grade" Ah, the heart of the matter: protecting the kiddies from reality. Children as chattel, keep my property pure as long as possible. You sound more old testament all the time. By sixth grade, they probably know as much as you do about it. "Further I don't want to pay for the crap our public schools want to pass off as education" You know, I want McDonalds to offer prime rib too, but they don't, and if I go elsewhere to get it--which you have the choice to do as well--I pay more. The reality of government is that you can't please everyone, and those who take the easy way out by going outside the system (instead of improving the system we have, which takes a lot more work than whining and sniping from the cheap seats) pay for the privilege. You want prime rib at McDonalds prices. Ain't gonna happen. " the job of government is to protect you from the criminal acts of others" And what, prey tell, is a "criminal act" if violating my rights isn't one? Who are you to decide, for that matter, what the job of government is in a democracy? If enough people say the job of government is providing education for all, then that's what its job IS. "Governments violate rights, people commit crimes." Get real. A government is just a collection of people. "Your an ass" That's "You're an ass," which MY PUBLIC SCHOOL taught me. Apparently yours didn't. I guess you must have been "unteachable." Or did you go to one of those excellent private schools? "Not only do I have the right to discriminate, I do it all the time. I do it when I employ people, I do it when I choose who I will sit next to at a meeting..." You are confusing two senses of the word "discriminate." At least, I think you are; maybe you are one of those who decides who to employ based on skin color or other non-work-related characteristics, which means you are hurting yourself by failing to hire the best person for the job. Maybe you choose who to sit next to on that basis, which means you live in a very narrow and ugly world. But assuming otherwise, your choice to employ the best person for a job or sit next to a friend are hardly the issue here. Your decision to do me harm by preventing me from going where I wish on public streets, buying a home where I wish if I can afford it, or eating in a restaurant are. Whether you care to admit it or not, your bigoted restaurant owner IS DOING ME HARM by making me go elsewhere because of my skin color when he is serving others. I see only evidence of concern for the owner in your arguments, but I'll bet if you ran out of gas and had to walk past a dozen gas stations before you got to one that would serve you because you happened to be born white, and similar things happened every day of your life, you'd sing a different tune. "I for one won't higher fundy christians" Though I believe that this falls into a different category than race or gender, this attitude is as foolish as the guy who won't hire blacks. I don't know what business you're in, but suppose you owned a computer company and the next Bill Gates wanted to work for you and you said no because he was a fundy. You've also missed an opportunity to plant a seed of reason into him/her. Several of my best friends were once fundies, and I've had a number of fundy friends over the years that provided stimulating conversation. Trust me, you aren't likely to have to fire them; sometimes they'll get so scared they'll quit for fear you'll convert them, sometimes they'll work twice as hard to prove just how much their religion makes them better workers, and maybe, on rarer occassions, they'll drift out of fundieland into reality. "Now, I think its perfectly clear you don't like libertarians" Actually, I have a number of friends who are Libertarians, and just like religionists, they are perfectly rational and can discuss things logically, until you question one of their articles of faith and ask them for evidence, y'know, FACTS. Then they call you an ass, or an idiot, and scamper away claiming I just don't understand. "My test scores were always above those in public schools(reading and math anyway.)" Test scores are more a product of innate ability than anything else; as someone consistently in the top 1% in that category, who went to a public school, I could simply cite myself as "proof." But that's the problem with anecdotal evidence; the real proof is the statistical comparisons, which if you would simply read them demonstrate clearly that the average net gain in scores is HIGHER in public schools than private. In other words, if your freshmen score [as a sample figure] an average equivalent of a 1200 SAT in a public school, their average score as a senior is going to be 1295, as opposed to a 1245 average if they went to a private Catholic school. Period. Furthermore, Catholic school students are more likely to use drugs, drink alcohol, or shoplift--and this is from a survey sponsored and published by the National Catholic Education Association, which I'm sure would have preferred the opposite results. I also suggest you read up on the boondoggles in Milwaukee, where two private "choice" schools have failed, leaving students-yup- seeking public schools as a fail-safe, and in one school the director wrote $47,000 in bad checks. Two similar schools are struggling to survive. As Dr. Alex Molar noted, "This is what happens when you make education policy based on ideological zealotry instead of the best interest of the children." A similar snafu occurred recently here in FL, when a local private school suddenly closed, again forcing public schools to absorb a sudden influx of hudreds of children. Research: there's NO substitute for it. I sincerely hope you and your children do have a nice life, but if you're planning on sending them to a private school (and there ARE a few good ones, secular, focused on academic excellence, run by dedicated educators who honestly thought they could do better without the red tape government involves, and were realistic in their tuition pricing), I hope you research it better than you've researched your arguments here. Cheers, Brent Yaciw, ATHALFLB@AOL.COM "Sure, I've got one. It's a perfect twenty-twenty." --Duane Thomas, Dallas Cowboys halfback, responding to a question on whether he has an IQ and providing more evidence that calling football players "student-athletes" is a joke. ================== ||END OF ARTICLE|| ================== "The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known." [John Stuart Mill] ========================== //*BEGINNING OF ARTICLE*// ========================== Rabid, Raving Atheism Part 1 Atheism defended. I'm sure I've said it over and over but here it is again: an atheist is simply one who has concluded, after considering the evidence, that no god exists. One may further conclude, based on one's knowledge of human psychology, sociology, and comparative religion, that no god can exist. I certainly have not yet heard a definition of a "god" that I can conceive of as actually existing in the real world. It is not merely a belief, in the way that a religion is a belief, i.e., clinging to faith in the absence of evidence, in the face of contrary evidence, sometimes. Atheism is as valid as an absence of belief in werewolves, fairies in the garden, astrology, Casper the ghost, Holy the ghost, or Santa. Furthermore, using rhetorical akido, I challenge christians to give me reasons why they do not believe in Krishna, Zeus, Allah, Kwan Yin, or whatever. Those reasons are also perfectly applicable to their home grown Yahweh and Jesus, why should I have to do all the work? Watson Heston cited Kings(1). This argument "proved" that the ba'alim did not exist. Now, there is an argument against god straight from an inspired source. Try the test. Does Yahweh do any better? How about that, guys? (1) The Freethinker's Pictorial Textbook. Agnosticism sounds good until you examine it closely. Why should I be agnostic about werewolves? About witches on broomsticks? If I claim to be agnostic on the subject of a deity, I am admitting that I cannot decide anything at all. Yet, I do not act as if werewolves were real, and I will not act as if god were real. If new evidence, of the sort that would validate any other claim, comes to light, I will certainly examine it. We can all think of perfectly simple things that would conclusively demonstrate the existence of extraterrestrial life, for instance. But for the same reasons that I do not think that evidence will come to light validating the claims that Atlantis existed or that there is such a thing as reincarnation, I am not going to waste any time looking for proof that things like gods exist. As Lemuel Washburn so aptly said: "If god exists, what objection can he have to saying so?"(2) (2) Is the bible worth reading, and other essays. Christians remind me of the doctor in the joke who found a new disease with no symptoms. Or as Delos McKown put it: "The invisible and the non existent look very much alike."(3) (3)The Mythmaker's Magic. Part 2 Atheism further defended. For an analogy, I refer people to Susan Blackmore's books on the paranormal, both _Dying to Live_ and _Adventures of a Parapsychologist_. You may know that she received the first degree awarded in Britain in parapsychology, and that after more than a decade of research into psi, she concluded that she was studying something that didn't exist. Theology suffers from the same problem as parapsychology: its purported object of study does not exist; all of the talk about god is done in the absence of a referent. Hypothesizing that god exists leads to false and misleading conclusions: like prayer works, there is an afterlife, teleology, and so on; as well, it is totally and utterly unnecessary. Blackmore put the problem thus, at the end of _Adventures of a Parapsychologist_: there can be two hypotheses about psi: 1) there are paranormal powers; 2) there are not. As data we accept the *experiences* of people in this area. People undoubtedly feel that they have experienced telepathy, precogition, dreams of the future and so on. Now, which hypothesis leads to increasing knowledge? In about 150 years of testing, parapsychologists have gone nowhere. She says the only reliable finding of parapsychology is that psi is not repeatable. If we *assume* as a working hypothesis: that these are psychological events within the human mind and that no paranormal powers exist, what do we get? The whole field of anomalistic psychology opens up, we have an understanding of mass delusion, the behavior of crowds, how memory works and fails, better understanding of perception, and the mechanisms involved and how they sometimes fail, the evolution of consciousness, perception, cognition and more. The same thing applies to the god hypothesis. Postulating that god exists does not work as an explanation of the world and its events. As a hypothesis, it fails every test. As Richard Dawkins said, in his debate with the Archbishop of York(4), "A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion _are_ scientific. Religion _is_ a scientific theory." (4) Lions 10, Christians 0. Of course, he is assuming that "God" is a term with some meaning. He says (ibid.): << Right then, what is God? And now come the weasel words. These are very variable. "God is not out there, he is in all of us." "God is the ground of all being." "God is the essence of life." "God is the universe." "Don't you believe in the universe?" "Of course I believe in the universe." "Then you believe in God." "God is love, don't you believe in love?" "Right, then you believe in God?" >> Sound familiar? To reiterate: not only does the god hypothesis lead to false and misleading conclusions, it is totally and utterly unnecessary. It is a useless and wasteful redundancy, as worthless as believing that Boreas is the source of the North Wind. OK, big finish from Richard Dawkins now: << I want to end by returning to science. It is often said, ..., that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't _prove_ that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies? The trouble with the agnostic argument is that it can be applied to anything. There is an infinite number of hypothetical beliefs we could hold which we can't positively disprove. On the whole, people don't believe in most of them, such as fairies, unicorns, dragons, Father Christmas, and so on. But on the whole they do believe in a creator God, together with whatever particular baggage goes with the religion of their parents. I suspect the reason is that most people, though not belonging to the [fundamentalists], nevertheless have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things. The great beauty of Darwin's theory of evolution is that it explains how complex, difficult to understand things could have arisen step by plausible step, from simple, easy to understand beginnings. We start our explanation from almost infinitely simple beginnings: pure hydrogen and a huge amount of energy. Our scientific, Darwinian explanations carry us through a series of well-understood gradual steps to all the spectacular beauty and complexity of life. The alternative hypothesis, that it was all started by a supernatural creator, is not only superfluous, it is also highly improbable. It falls foul of the very argument that was originally put forward in its favour. This is because any God worthy of the name must have been a being of colossal intelligence, a supermind, an entity of extremely low probability--a very improbable being indeed. Even if the postulation of such an entity explained anything (and we don't need it to), it still wouldn't help because it raises a bigger mystery than it solves. Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that. We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed. >> Now to remove that last teeny weeny scrap of probability, to which he makes allusion, all we need is the known human tendency to fantasize, confabulate, and believe what they wish rather than what really exists, as Blackmore noted in parapsychology. Of the two hypotheses, 1) god exists; or, 2) people make up gods; the second functions much better as a predictor of events in the world and that is all we ask of any scientific theory. If god existed, we would expect that descriptions of it would be more or less the same all over the world. If people make up gods, we would expect gods to reflect local appearances. If god were real and a source of morality, we would expect moral laws which claim to come from a god to be the same all over the world, if people make up gods, we would expect them to assign their local taboos and mores to divine sources. The idea that there is no god and that people make gods up functions so much better as a predictor of events that it is perverse to withold assent to it. Were this any other area of human behavior, one that had not been infected by the "faith" virus, which tells you that believing impossible things is good, and that doubt is bad, there would simply be no argument. If you meet the Messiah on the road, crucify him. Part 3 After having written part 2, I experienced minor satori while driving on Sunday. A number of things came together. I certainly hope that the quotes from Dawkins were persuasive. If anyone wants the whole thing, it is in the December 1994 Nullifidian. There is an link to old copies of the Nullifidian off of my web page http://infoweb.magi.com/~godfree/magazine.html, or you can go direct through gopher://gopher.etext.org:70/11/Zines/Nullifidian/-2.12 or I will send a copy of the Dawkins article, "Lions 10, Christians 0" to anyone who wishes. The first big thought was a gut-level appreciation of the truth and beauty of existentialism. Existentialism was RIGHT! This sounds like one of those things you write down in the middle of the night, when you think you've solved the problems of the universe while drunk or asleep, and then you wake up in the morning and all there is is something like "universe pervaded by odor of coffee." But nooooo,... If I remember right, the main point of existentialism is that there is no such "thing" as "essence", there is only existence. >From Plato onward, certain philosophers and most theologians have believed that essence is the more important. For Plato, the real world was a mere shadowy representation of the perfect world of eternal essences. The sin of reification. I am using Plato only as a scapegoat, the problem is universal. Existentialism has been around for a long time, I studied it 30 years ago, but I think we occasionally get lost, thinking about "the absurd", "hell is other people" and its other catch phrases, and forget about the main point. [How you could start from this, and then fall for some claptrap cobbled together patchwork of guesses like Marxism with a reified teleology of History, and Classes, is beyond me, but maybe I missed something.] [Taner Edis has pointed out, as part of his general antiphilosopher campaign, that many alleged existentialists are mere poseurs, spouting cliched phrases about absurdity and 'existence precedes essence' without saying anything worthwhile. I am not defending existentialism, except as it appeared to me at that moment, when I had an immediate apprehension of the difference between a wholly materialistic view, and one where "essences" or "spirits" are part of the deal.] We can see how people might get to thinking like this: a circle drawn in the dirt is understood as an imperfect representation of the idea of a perfect two dimensional grouping of an infinite number of points all equidistant from one central point. Does a Perfect Circle exist somewhere of which all our drawings are mere shadows? If so, might there be a canonical, perfect Chair, or an eternal Rose, of which all real chairs and roses were also mere pathetic attempts at embodiment? As often is the case, we got it exactly ass backwards. It is only in the head that this essence abstraction mechanism works at all. We have an extremely well-developed ability to abstract similarities, to induce (i.e., the verb form of induction) relationships, and this creates the categories that make the essences appear to exist. They don't. Only things exist. Essence-thinking also allows you to believe that you are essentially a wonderful, decent person, while existentially you commit atrocities. "My essence is goodness," you can say, while you are forced to foreclose the mortgage, twirling your moustache. "The essence of the Church is sweetness and light, just right now we are forced to burn a few heretics, and slaughter unbelievers, but that's not the REAL essence of the church." Existentialism says that essence only comes from being, what you do is what you are. Further enlightening meditations: 1) First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. 2) There is no sky. 3) North is not up. Sorry, for the apparent (or actual) incoherence. The first, to me, means that "mountain," is a mere noise, a word, the thing is not a mountain, it simply is. The same goes for everything else. We think that by naming something we reveal, but in truth we conceal. This causes inital confusion, as has just been demonstrated, but works itself out. 2) Look up at night. (I've been doing this every clear night lately staring at Comet Hyakutake). What you are seeing is three dimensional, at least if it's clear. Some stars are millions of light years further away than others. There is no dome, no firmament. Try to experience it directly. Essences and all transcendental entities are only as real as that dome. 3) There is no "up" in the universe. Virtually any line would do for a reference. Avoid boreohomohemispherocentricity. (5) (5) The Trouble with Christmas, Tom Flynn. Like getting a gut level appreciation of Darwinism, ("actually, simple things *can* give rise to complex things, here's how it happens...") understanding that essences don't exist, and that many mores are purely arbitrary, rather than the result of Divine Fiat, or even Divine Honda, appears to be one of the things that people find hard to do. Believing that essences exist leads one to the thought that the Ideal Government exists, that the Perfect Human exists, that there is One True Moral Code, and a lot of other serious mistakes. And, of course, anyone who gets in the way of Perfection had better watch out. Existence is all there is. The material world is all there is. There is no transcendental to tempt us. We create a falsehood and tempt ourselves with it. So, that is why, after experiencing this in a flash, (and you may be wishing it had been one of those ineffable experiences), the next thought was a clash of the alleged cry of the Jewish crowd at the crucifiction, "Let his blood be on us, and on our children..." clanging against the old Buddhist saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." I had always interpreted that latter to mean that, if you had any idea of the Buddha that could be articulated, you would have to get rid of that idea. In fact, if there were still a "you" left, then you hadn't made it "there" yet. I then intuited that we, as atheists and humanists, should accept the responsibility for doing away with the supernatural, and the supernatural seeker, the transcendental tempter, in ourselves. We have slaughtered the supernatural and trashed the transcendental. For real people living in the real world, it is not a bad thing to kill Santa, or his anagram, or Jesus. Kill Krishna, murder Mohammed, massacre Mary, garotte god and hang the holy ghost; they are only ideas, and no idea is worth a human life, and any human life is worth hundreds of ideas. The only good god is a dead god. Let his ichor be on us, and our memetic descendants. I am proud to be a Christ-killer. The last stronghold of "god" is as the ground of essences. (This is after eliminating god as the creator of the universe, the creator of life, or the source of consciousness, which we did last weekend. The authority of the Bible, and other holy books, was destroyed long ago. Try to keep up.) Rather than a Platonic transcendental realm, christians speak of the Mind of God, even some scientists use the metaphor when speaking about the fundamental laws and relationships of the universe. Chairness is an Idea in the Mind of God. Morals exist eternally in the mind of god. The conservation of energy, the Laws of Logic are Ideas of God, etc. Sooooo.....Anyway, that's why I thought, "If you meet the Messiah on the road, crucify him." It's good advice. Kill God, kill all gods. By whatever method you choose. Guilt, schmilt; Jesus is a stupid idea that is better off dead and gone. We are all somewhat infected by Jesus and Christianity memes, or Moses and Judaism memes, or Mohammed and Islam memes or Krishna and Vedanta memes. It is long past time for some spring mental house cleaning. Coda: Variations on the theme: "If you meet the Buddha by the road, kill him." "If you meet the Messiah on the road, crucify him." "If you see Santa coming down your chimney, light the fireplace." "If you see Mary in the sky, open your eyes." "Rabbit stew is a better meal than bunny eggs." "If you meet Holy the Ghost, say 'Boo!' and scare it to death." "If angels dance before you, turn the pin OVER, and poke!" [The real question is, How many angels can dance on the *point* of a pin?] "If Satan offers to buy your sole, refuse, but you *may* ~give~ it away just for the halibut." OK, now things are just getting silly. I never met a theist I didn't dispute. I never met a theos ==================== //*END OF ARTICLE*// ==================== "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the gospels in praise of intelligence." --Bertrand Russell ========================== //*BEGINNING OF ARTICLE*// ========================== From: oblio@magi.com (Oblio) Bear in mind as you read this that in Ontario the Roman Catholic school boards are publicly funded. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ HAMILTON-WENTWORTH ROMAN CATHOLIC SEPARATE SCHOOL BOARD 90 Mulberry Street P.O. Box 2012 Hamilton, Ontario L8V 4R1 (905) 525-2930 MEMO TO: APPLICANTS FOR TEACHING POSITIONS WITH THE HAMILTON-WENTWORTH R.C. SEPARATE SCHOOL BOARD FROM: MR. J.G. PONIKVAR DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION RE: H00: PASTORAL REFERENCE Thank you for your interest in seeking employment with this Board. Roman Catholic Separate Schools of Ontario exist to provide Roman Catholic parents with the opportunity to ensure that their children receive a Catholic education. Since Catholic parents may choose between public and separate schools, their choice of separate schools reflects their belief that the staff of a Catholic school will be committed to providing a different educational experience for their children than might be obtained in the public schools. The special character of the Catholic school depends, to a great extent, upon the religious character of the staff of the school. We believe, therefore, that we must employ teachers to whom we can confidently entrust the school and the students with the assurance that these teachers will give prime concern to cultivating the practice and development of the faith in themselves and in their students. A commitment to these objectives is important if our schools are to maintain and strengthen the confidence and trust which our Catholic people have in our schools. The whole Catholic community has the responsibility of collaborating in the selection of staff for Catholic schools. It is for this reason, therefore, that we seek the advice of our clergy when selecting candidates for positions in the school system. We expect that each candidate will assist us in substantiating his/her commitment to the Church and to Catholic Education and also assure us of his/her willingness to give the special witness to the faith which is expected of Catholic teachers in Catholic schools. (Page 2) REASON FOR REQUESTING A PASTORAL REFERENCE 1. The Catholic School Board has a duty: i) to employ teachers to whom it can confidently entrust the school and the students with the assurance that these teachers will give the practice and development of the faith prime concern, ii) to ensure that the character and leadership of a teacher is such that it will strengthen the confidence and trust of the people and the clergy in our Catholic Scholls, iii) to seek the advice of the local Church, in the person of its pastors, in providing our students and parents with teachers who will give solid witness to the faith in both word and example. 2. Important Note References for teachers should be addressed to the Superintendent of Human Resources. Each letter should be marked "confidential". The Superintendent will retain the references until such time as appointments have been confirmed by the Board. References shall not be copied or distributed to anyone else. It will be the Superintendent's responsibility to indicate whether or not the reference received is satisfactory. Following the approval of the appointments the references will be destroyed. We suggest that candidates requesting references should be interviewed by the pastor and if possible, made aware of the contents of the reference. (page 3) HAMILTON-WENTWORTH ROMAN CATHOLIC SEPARATE SCHOOL BOARD PASTORAL REFERENCE 1. Name of candidate: 2. Position for which candidate is applying (to be completed at the Board office): In the event that the candidate is not well enough known to you, you may refer this reference, to be completed by: (a) _________________________________ (name of priest) or, (b) return the form directly to the Superintendent of Human Resources for follow-up. ________________________ (Signature) (page 4) 3. Indicate the length of time and in what capacity you have known this candidate. (Give approximate dates) 4. Does the candidate faithfully attend Sunday Mass and participate in the frequent reception of the Eucharist? (It is important that this minimum demonstration of commitment be clearly established in the reference.) 5. To what extent has the candidate assumed extra responsibilities in parish life? Indicate whether or not you consider the candidate's activity satisfactory in view of his/her aspiration, state of life and available opportunities. 6. Is the candidate, to the best of your knowledge, of good moral character? 7. Does the candidate, to the best of your knowledge, accept and profess the basic and essential truths of the Catholic faith? 8. To what degree, in your opinion, does the candidate's commitment to his or her state of life qualify him or her for the position to which he or she aspires? (page 5) 9. Do you have reason to believe that this candidate would be agood influence on the students under his or her care and on the other teachers with whom he or she would associate within the Catholic school community? 10. Do you believe that this candidate would work to enhance and facilitate the high degree of co-operation which must exist between the Catholic school and the local pastoral team in such activities as: -sacramental preparation -liturgy preparation -preparation for celebration? 11. Other comments which you believe need to be made in order to guide this administration in assessing the candidate's commitment and suitability as a teacher of Catholic children. ________________________________ Date PARISH SEAL ________________________________ Signature of Pastor REMINDER: The Pastor is required to return this form directly to the Superintendent of Human Resources, Hamilton-Wentworth Roman Catholic Separate School Board, 90 Mulberry Street, P.O. Box 2012, Hamilton, Ontario, L8N 3R9, in the return-addressed envelope provided. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I got a copy of the application last year from a Roman Catholic acquaintance of mine. I borrowed it from her long enough to race to the nearest photocopier, with my nose piched shut all the while. I simply HAD to have a copy. When I returned, she stuttered, "W-w-what are you going to do w-w-with it?" I said, "Don't worry about it." One day this discriminarory piece of shit application will sit in a glass showcase in some Canadian museum. Families will walk by and the kids will say, "Mommy,mommy, why did the Ontario government ever sponser that kind of religious discrimination?" "Shut up Suzie! That document is a fake. It's just a part of the Atheistic Master Plan to bring shame upon the Holy See." [Ed. Comment: like that nonsense about Galileo and Giordano Bruno] ========================================================== || END OF TEXTS || ========================================================== There is no charge for receiving this, and there is no charge for distributing copies to any electronic medium. Nor is there a restriction on printing a copy for use in discussion. You may not charge to do so, and you may not do so without attributing it to the proper author and source. If you would like to support our efforts, and help us acquire better equipment to bring you more and better articles, you may send money to Greg Erwin at: 100, Terrasse Eardley Aylmer, Qc J9H 6B5 CANADA. Donations to the Humanist Association of Canada are tax deductible from Canadian income. 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Once again: ISSN: 1201-0111 The Nullifidian Volume Three, Number 3: MARCH 1996 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The problem with religions that have all the answers is that they don't let you ask the questions. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Once again, you can now find me at: http://infoweb.magi.com/~godfree/index.html Follow the link to magazines. There is a gopher link there to an archive with all of the back issues available. (*) There is no footnote, and certainly not an endnote. - fin - -- I'll never grow up, but I'll never grow down, http://infoweb.magi.com/~godfree It's a raggedy world, it keeps spinning around, ai815@freenet.carleton.ca Don't sound like much, but I swear it's true: godfree@magi.com There ain't no time for the worrying blues. -- Buffy Sainte Marie